


the people they came from

by kira_katrine



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27157058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_katrine/pseuds/kira_katrine
Summary: She was still Lyndsay Ballard. She had never been anyone else, and she never would be.So why did she need so much convincing?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	the people they came from

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tablelamp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tablelamp/gifts).



_ I am Lyndsay Ballard. _

She repeated that to herself every day, trying to convince herself as much as anybody else. Lyndsay Ballard could slowly grow to like the Kobali food, which she’d originally thought bland and often had what she’d found to be an unappealing slippery texture. It wasn’t much different from how she’d never liked asparagus as a kid, but had grown to as an adult--wasn’t it? It couldn’t be. That would still be disconcerting, a sign that maybe she really was starting to forget, to get used to this life--but it was better than the alternative. The idea that what they were doing to her was working. That her insides were changing just as her outsides were, as her hair fell out and her skin took on a purplish-gray tone.

She dreamed of Voyager. She dreamed of laughing with Harry and Tom, of Kes’s calming voice, of games on the holodeck, of running her fingers through her hair and seeing clumps come out in her hand, of realizing she’d always looked like this, she’d always been this, she just hadn’t known--

It wasn’t possible. Except it was. It had happened to people before, discovering their memories weren’t real and their life was somebody else’s, or perhaps was never anyone’s at all--if anything, the story they’d told her, that she’d died and come back and now her body and her mind and her life were all being rewritten into something which was never hers, that was much less plausible, that made no sense at all--

_ If I can’t trust my own memories, what can I trust? _

So she convinced herself she remembered everything just as well as she had on board Voyager, just as she had on Earth. She wrote everything down, over and over, hiding it from her new family--the name of every friend and family member she’d known on Earth, on Voyager, the things they’d done together, the things she’d liked about them. The things they’d said they liked about her, for when her new parents said she’d never truly belonged with the people she’d spent the first twenty-five years of her life with, for when they said that if she ever had, she’d changed so much since her rebirth that they’d hardly recognize her, let alone accept her.

_ I am still Lyndsay Ballard. I have never been anyone else. I never will be. _

But it was Voyager’s food that tasted wrong now--even the berry salad she’d loved was just off somehow, too strong a taste, not like she’d remembered. She’d thought it nicely tart before, but now it was unpleasantly sour. Maybe they were just a bad batch of berries--but no one else was complaining. And she knew, deep down, that wasn’t true.

She’d tried to fight it, she’d thought the fact that she’d managed to keep so much of her memory meant she was succeeding--but they’d changed her.

_ Who was Lyndsay Ballard? _

In sickbay, somebody was missing.

Of course, Kes couldn’t be on shift all the time. Lyndsay knew that. She had to sleep sometimes, and eat, and take time for herself. But Lyndsay was in sickbay a lot--and she never saw Kes once. She didn’t see her anywhere else, either.

She wasn’t sure she should ask. Whatever had happened to Kes, it probably wasn’t the kind of thing anybody wanted to talk about. Probably the kind of thing they’d rather forget. Like she was sure what had happened to her, to Lyndsay, had been.

But she had to know. She’d never been the greatest with tact. Dying and coming back herself had made her perhaps a little better, but even so--

_ I am still Lyndsay Ballard. _

She imagined what it must have been like for Kes, transforming into something she could never have imagined, something she was always meant to be. Finally finding where she truly belonged.

_ How did one ever know? _

“Ensign Ballard?”

Lyndsay looked up. A small child was standing in front of her. Mezoti, one of four children the Voyager crew had apparently rescued from the Borg some weeks before.

“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. For accidentally shutting off the comm on you.”

“It’s totally okay.” Lyndsay smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring way. “It was an accident, like you said.”

Mezoti stood there, fidgeting. She looked like she still had more to say.

“Naomi told me that she heard her mom say you used to be here before,” she said. “Were you?”

“Yep,” Lyndsay said. “You weren’t here then.” When Lyndsay had last been on Voyager, there hadn’t been any children on board, except for Ensign Wildman’s baby. A baby who was now walking and talking and getting into everybody else’s business, apparently. “But I missed it here a lot, so I came back.”  _ Gotta keep the story kid-appropriate, I guess.  _ But then, she thought, looking at the metal node that was still embedded in the girl’s left temple, Mezoti wasn’t really a typical kid.

Mezoti slumped into a chair. “I’m bored.”

“Doesn’t Seven have anything planned for you to do?” Lyndsay asked. Mezoti and the other three Borg children seemed to spend most of their time with Seven of Nine, who Lyndsay hadn’t ever really spoken to. She’d come on the ship after Lyndsay had been gone, and she gave off an incredibly intimidating air that Lyndsay wouldn’t even know where to begin with. She certainly wouldn’t want to get in her way.

Mezoti wrinkled her nose. “Seven’s being… weird these days,” she said.

“Weird?” Lyndsay asked. “How so?” 

“She’s trying to tell us what to do all the time--I mean, she always does that, but more than usual. She’s making way too many rules about things that are supposed to be fun. I thought we were supposed to learn how to be individuals, not just all stand there and make perfect cubes in perfect order.”

_ Yeah, she’d hate me.  _ “I think you’re right,” Lyndsay said. “Being spontaneous sometimes is a very important part of being hum--of being an individual, I guess, whatever species you are--”

“Norcadian,” Mezoti said. She paused. “The captain told me.”

“And some people, even some humans, just don’t get that,” Lyndsay went on. She smiled as she thought of Harry, who she wished would lighten up sometimes--but at least he’d do it, if she or Tom bugged him enough. He wasn’t  _ scary _ about it. “But I do. At least, I think I do.”

The Kobali weren’t Borg, they were all individuals, with their own minds and personalities-- _ but they sure did put a lot of effort into making everyone look and think like them, didn’t they? They couldn’t just let-- _

_ \--of course we can’t. We give our people new life. The old life must end in order for the new life to begin. It is our way. _

Lyndsay shook her head to clear it. “Anyway,” she said, “don’t let her get you down.”

“She’ll get over it,” Mezoti said. “Seven’s not that bad when you get to know her. She’s showed us a lot of fascinating things. She plays kadis-kot with Naomi all the time, they showed me how since I don’t think they had that on the planet where I came from. And I probably wouldn’t remember if they did.”

“Do you ever want to go back?” Lyndsay blurted out.

Mezoti looked slightly confused. “Back?”

_ Why did I say that? That was not a good thing to say. I have no business starting this conversation.  _ “Back to your planet,” Lyndsay said. “The one you don’t really remember.”

“I don’t know,” Mezoti said. “I think the captain wants us to. She said there’s probably people looking for us and they’re probably sad that we’re gone. I know that sad is an emotion many humanoids experience when they lose something that’s important to them. So I asked her who I’d be important to and she said that I probably have a family, with parents and maybe brothers or sisters. And I know what all those things are and I don’t want anybody to be sad, but I like it here. I have friends here. I don’t need to go back.”

_ I had a father. He was the owner of a book shop on-- _

No. Lyndsay Ballard had a father. He was a professor at a university, a professor of anthropology, who would surely have a very interesting perspective on everything that was going on here, she knew he would, she just didn’t know what it might--

_ I am Lyndsay Ballard. _

“Naomi doesn’t really remember her planet either,” Mezoti said. “She’s been studying a whole bunch about it, though, and also the planet where her father came from. He’s a member of Species 9083--I mean, he’s from Ktaris. She wants to visit it one day. She said they have huge glaciers and big snowy mountains there. I’ve seen snow a bunch of times, but I don’t think that was the same. Seven said Borg don’t really feel cold the same way. I hope I get to go with her. It sounds fascinating.”

“Yeah?” Lyndsay said. “Well, I hope you do too.”

The Doctor had reversed much more drastic transformations than Lyndsay’s, she knew. As an ensign, she wasn’t always aware of everything that went on, but she’d heard some very interesting rumors in her three years on the ship, and being friends with Harry had meant she knew a bit more than she suspected most of the lower-ranked officers did. He’d find something. He always did.

For the time being, she didn’t look like the people she came from anymore, and she wasn’t sure she felt like them either. But what did that even mean? Her experience, even before her rebirth, wasn’t the same as Mezoti’s or Seven’s, which was entirely different from Kes’s or Neelix’s, which was different again from Harry’s or Lieutenant Torres’s. Some of them didn’t know where they came from. Some of them weren’t sure where they fit in. Some of them were torn between worlds. She didn’t have to give anything up--or at least she shouldn’t.

She was Lyndsay Ballard.

And she always would be.


End file.
